In the carpet-cleaning industry, professional carpet-cleaners use highly effective machines specially designed for performing heavy-duty cleaning. Examples of such machines are disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,086,539 and 5,077,862. These machines typically have a substantial weight which may reach or even exceed seventy pounds. While being very heavy, the construction of such machines does not incorporate any wheels for transportation purposes. Rather, these machines move across carpets by rotation of their scrubbing brushes. However, to transport such machines from their storage location or service truck to the carpeting that needs to be cleaned, the machines are loaded on a wheeled platform and rolled thereon to a desired location.
With some types of previous wheeled platforms one had to pick up the machine to load it on its wheeled platform or to take the machine off the platform. Of course, with the machine's substantial weight, such operation may become rather burdensome and even dangerous, especially for smaller persons and women.
One prior wheeled platform disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,755,006 offered a ramp for pulling a very heavy machine on the platform. Such ramp, however, was very steep and still required substantial effort by the user for pulling the machine up on the platform. Considering the machine's heavy weight, such pulling up remained a very hard task. In addition to the physical difficulty in positioning of the machine on such platform, the repetitive application of the substantial pulling force to a machine handle sometimes resulted in damage to the handle.
Furthermore, in performing professional cleaning, the machine often needs to be moved up or down the stairs. With some previous wheeled platforms, the user had to pick up and carry the machine up or down the stairs. This made the transportation along the stairs very difficult.
In summary, there is a need for an improved transport platform allowing easier loading of carpet-cleaning machines on their wheeled platforms and facilitating their transportation, including along the stairs.